The West’s Long-failed Economic System Where to From Here?

By Ian Buckley and Nikolaus Fominas JULY 2017

Table of Contents

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? ...... 1 How the United States Emerged from the Great Depression ...... 5 WWII’s Human Costs Country by Country ...... 6 Illegal Regime Changes with Horrifying Tragic Consequences ...... 8 General Wesley Clark’s 2007 Lecture, ‘America’s Policy ‘Coup’ ...... 11 Previous Eras Revisited - and Another Chance to Rectify ‘the System’? ...... 15 The Urgency of Peaceful Economic Remediation to Stabilize the World ...... 20 Measures for Crisis Control: e.g., ‘Ensuring Euro-Atlantic Security’ ...... 23 Sources ...... 27

Australian National University Emeritus Faculty

Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here?

Given its industrial advantages, five hundred years of Western Leadership should have been able to lead our world close to prime economic, social and environmentally sustainable condition. So, what could account for its present mess, its confused disarray, widespread economic, political, military and environmental crises?

Much is revealed in Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000.(PK) Yet that account stops short of examining just why the clear potential of rapid industrial development could not have provided equivalent benefits and mutual satisfaction between trading partners, a vital issue for understanding how one might remedy the most fundamental of the world’s problems.

We suggest such consideration has been avoided because it challenges the long- standing economic system Western world leaders regard as unquestionable, i.e., ‘sacrosanct’. Here, we do not mean ‘capitalism’ as such because clearly Natural and working capital are essential to all economic systems. But rather, the long- existing system stemming from feudal times that hinges on exclusivity and unearned privilege, including government-granted monopolies and other devices, such as the ’rights’ to plunder the assets of ‘lesser’ people across the world, by war ‘as necessary’, today known as neoliberalism. But since raising the issue puts so much at stake, many continue silent.

Yet sound warnings against prolonging it are not new. They were clearly stated in the 18th century by moral philosopher cum economist Adam Smith who recognized the evils of the current system which he referred to as ‘the mercantile political economy’, - he wishing to see it replaced with a mutually beneficial fair-trading system. What he sought was across-the-board justice in all domestic and international economic areas through a system that could be largely self-regulatory. The principle was simple. All market exchanges to be freely entered into such that the goods/services exchanged were of equivalent value as agreed by the trading partners. Hence, traders could develop confidence in one another, this leading to mutual satisfaction and lasting friendships, all enabling balanced trade which was stable. And once that occurred internationally as well as domestically, it could form the basis of a wealthier, peaceful world, - the exact opposite of what existed in Smiths day.(AS_MS ; AS_WN ; IB4)

For, already, the ‘business world’ of his time was marked by extreme injustices, the extension of claims on the commons, together with other inequities underlying the trading system which lead to domestic and international rivalries - and wars. As Smith realized, the base problem was the persistence across Europe’s nations of unearned privileges: land enclosures, inherited wealth and influence over

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 1 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved governments, these granting them both domestic and foreign monopolies plus many other wealth-extracting scams.(IB9, 4)

Moreover, their system’s weak demand and liability to depression encouraged Europe’s maritime powers to explore widely, many territories subject to forced settlement and plunder. Hence, the shameful progression of Europe’s mercantile economies, e.g., as happened after 1492 when Spain and Portugal colonized and plundered across the Americas, - then enslaved native peoples whose gold, silver and forced-labour cash-crops contributed massively to Europe’s expanding wealth for over 300 years. Such aggression was more than bad enough, but in contesting over the spoils of conquest, it led to the never-ending series of wars Europe’s powers had with one another, indeed, through to WWI, WWII, and since. And, all without any recognition that such tragedies derived from the same unjust privilege- based system that Smith insightfully revealed and condemned.(AS_WN, IV.7.82 ; BC ; UNESCO ; IB8, 10-14)

Indeed, as Smith saw the injustice and absurdity of it all, “...nations have been taught that their interest consisted in beggaring all their neighbours. Each nation has been made to look with an invidious eye upon the prosperity of all the nations with which it trades, and to consider their gain as its own loss. Commerce, which ought naturally to be, among nations, as among individuals, a bond of union and friendship, has become the most fertile source of discord and animosity. The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy. But the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot perhaps be corrected may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquillity of anybody but themselves.” (AS_WN, IV. 3. 38)

Late 19th century economist John A. Hobson strongly supported such wisdom, he cautioning against Europe’s aggressively competitive trade cum regime change/colonization practices, its fatalistic alliances (JH; GFK1) plus the enormous arms pile-ups, all leading to major war. But Hobson’s (and Churchill’s 1901, 1909) warnings ignored (WC2 ; IB8,18-20), WW1 came with truly catastrophic self- destroying consequences.(MG1) As Paul Kennedy recorded, “...the population losses and economic disruptions caused by four and a half years of ‘total’ war were immense. Around 8 million men were killed in actual fighting, with another 7 million permanently disabled and a further 15 million ‘more or less seriously wounded’ – the vast majority of these being in the prime of their productive life.” - “... the final casualty list for this extended period might have been as much as 60 million people, with nearly half of these losses occurring in Russia....” And by the late 1920s the prevailing images of WWI “...were of death, destruction, horror,

2 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved waste, and the futility of it all. The ‘Carthaginian peace’ of 1919, the lack of those benefits promised by wartime politicians in return for the people’s sacrifices, the millions of maimed veterans and of war widows, the economic troubles of the 1920s, the loss of faith and the breakdown in Victorian social and personal relationships, were all blamed upon the folly of the July 1914 decisions.” (PK, 359-6, 30-67 ; c.f, WC4. 22)

True, for ultimately WW1’s tragic results were clearly the logical outcome of the feudal-derived aggressive mercantile political economic system Smith so clearly defined and denounced. Moreover, by 1914 Europe’s enhanced industrial power amplified its destructive effects enormously. And sadly, at Versailles the so-called victors, Britain and France failed to debate the war’s combative trade-cum-plunder origins because, true to mercantile thought, their minds were set on gain by dismembering the alleged ‘sole guilty party’ Germany as a way of adding booty to their own Empires across Africa and the Middle East. (WC4 ; JMK}

Since it was led by communists, the other great concern was Russia’s 1917 revolution and the failure of the 22-nation (1918-1921) military intervention to strangle it at birth.(IB8, 23-25) Accordingly, their Versailles commitment to an international conference to limit arms production (an agreed ‘cause of the war’) was repeatedly deferred, - until 1932! But by then the 1929 Great Depression had deepened, and Western leaders’ most urgent concern was to stop the suffering Germans ‘going communist’. As Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, put it to the House, "We have to choose and our choice is very clear, shall we disarm ourselves, or shall we allow the Germans to rearm?" (Hansard May 13, 1932 ; WC5i ; IB8, 26-29) Hence the Conference’s failure and the decision to assist Hitler’s Germany re- arm, - this including the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 through which Britain unilaterally ‘authorized’ Germany to rebuild its navy, including its submarines. As Churchill’s The Gathering Storm documented, much more calculated ‘assistance’ would come from Britain’s Conservatives.(WC5i, 250-288)

For, although these folk had no cause to fear attack by Russia, (that war-wrecked country desperate to avoid war) - they continued to fear the spread of ideas, the ‘virus’ that could inspire their Depression-stricken lower classes to revolt. Hence, Russia’s experiment must be made to fail, by war if necessary. So, ‘just in case’, they sought a delegate force to do the fighting for them, strongly anti-communist Hitler’s Germany being the obvious choice. However that involved turning a blind eye to the mercantile colonial ambitions of the Axis powers. Recognizing Hitler’s aim as World domination, Churchill attempted to stop such moves, but unsuccessfully, as he was not in power. Hence, freed of opposition from the Western Powers, Japan invaded Manchuria/China; Italy, Ethiopia; Germany, Austria then Czechoslovakia, - on its way to Russia. And thus in just 20 years came the Second World War, - ‘cleverly’ blamed on Germany and its Axis partners’ aggression. Hence, the perfect cover-up.(IB8, 30-34)

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 3 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved To these ‘Conservatives’ and like-minded people, that might look like success, - but only if you could convince yourself that the many tens of millions of deaths, the human carnage and suffering, plus the extreme material wastage was a price worth paying to ensure continuation of the West’s aggressively-competitive mercantile war-generating system with its special benefits to society’s upper echelons. For that is what it boils down to, a point that Western governments should already have considered, including a far preferable alternative such as Smith’s fair-trade system. After all that is not magic but common-sense straightforward ‘capitalism’ stripped of preferential monopolies and other sleight-of-hand scams, including inroads into the resource wealth of the commons.(DB) Here, Smith stresses justice precisely because it is essential for attaining a sustainable resource base (i.e., Nature), economic stability and mutually-satisfying beneficial exchanges that provide the confidence and friendships required for domestic and international well-being and harmony.

For Americans and others the issue was and remains of particular importance. After all, the US emerged from WW2 economically restored, its ‘Natural capital’ largely intact, its landscapes and cities preserved, ready for their trial at world leadership which could have focused on helping the war-ravaged world rebuild, - while encouraging it to convert to cooperative positive trade. But, sadly just before war’s end it got off to a very bad start by fire-bombing 65 highly-flammable Japanese cities, then demonstrating the effects of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, notwithstanding President Truman’s military advisors like General Eisenhower and Admiral William D. Leahy strongly objecting because blockaded Japan was ready to surrender on terms eventually agreed to.(PDE1 ; WDL ; USSBS-sum ; USSBS-1)

Nevertheless, the possibility of a just world leadership still remained open when the US hosted the post-WW2 San Francisco conference at which the United Nations Charter came into force to guide the world into peaceful cooperative communities and thus eliminate forever ‘the scourge of war’. The UN Charter set many positive goals aimed at economic developments to satisfy basic human needs. Specifically too, on war’s prevention: Article 2 (4) decreeing that Member states “…shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” Article 51 including, “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. …. ; and Article 52 specifying the legality of regional arrangements for “…the maintenance of international peace and security provided that such arrangements or agencies and their activities are consistent with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations.” Also, references to the rights of states to self government and independence are found in Article 55, these rights

4 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved also guaranteed through Articles 2 (4) and 51, thus making clear the right of self defence, as well as collective self defence aided by other nations.(UNC)

We’ve singled out these Articles because since 1945 they have been repeatedly overridden by those long regarded as responsible ‘leading’ nations. For example, through multiple forced regime changes on Member states, and NATO’s extended misapplications across the world - such all too reminiscent of the ‘Allies’ by- passing the League of Nations preceding WW2. Thus, immediately on war’s end, the former kingdom of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia which had been colonized by France since 1887, - until Japan took over during WW2, following which the US allowed it to be re-colonized by France. Hence, Vietnam which had continued its independence struggle for 58 years was forced to continue that resistance until it defeated the French in 1954. But, even then the US itself took over in a horrifyingly cruel war that caused the deaths of some 58,000 mostly young Americans and millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, a high proportion from massively destructive cruel aerial bombardment, until finally in 1973 popular American revulsion brought it to an end. So, as we may well ask, how could this possibly have happened? For in moral terms, its just like all the other industrially- amplified mercantile ‘modern’ wars, this one also in defiance of its clear illegality under the recently agreed UN Charter.(BT3, Ch.5)

How the United States Emerged from the Great Depression

As described by Stanford historian David Kennedy, US citizens came into WW2 after 13 years of the 1929 Great Depression still suffering its dire effects with 45% unemployed and 15% households under the poverty line. Fortuitously, however, America’s great industrial potential which President Roosevelt put to work making armaments for American and Allied forces, had dramatic effects not just on the course of the war but in raising the US from its deep depression. Levels of output of all classes of war-time hardware were quite remarkable, that ultimately including nuclear weapons – ‘lest Hitler got them first’! All that took very large numbers of workers, but with the Second Front delayed until mid 1944, plenty still for all military and most civil needs.(DK)

The war over, there had to be a decision on how best to manage its post-war economy in the best interests of Americans and others. As the world’s leading power, it had great economic opportunities to head up a desperately needed rebuilding programme for the many war-shattered countries of Europe and Asia, an extraordinary challenge with clear opportunities for establishing a stable, prosperous and highly appreciative world. That, along with re-ordering its domestic economy to reduce demand-limiting inequities which had long retarded its health and general welfare, would ensure a sustainably positive future for all. In all this, - and for what follows, - it is important to understand the extreme variations of human and material costs of WW2. On national human losses we include historian

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 5 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved David Kennedy’s table which speaks for itself, such variations being altogether extreme:

WWII’s Human Costs Country by Country Country Total War Dead Civilian Deaths United Kingdom 350,000 100,000 China 10,000,000 6,000,000 Yugoslavia 2,000,000 1-1.5,000,000 Japan 3,000,000 1,000,000 Poland 8,000,000 6,000,000 Germany 6,500,000 1,000,000 Soviet Union 24,000,000 16,000,000 United States 405,000 6

For obvious reasons it is also important to take into consideration the economic downsides suffered by the most war-damaged nations, the deficits in human skills, the destruction of buildings, factory plant, natural habitat and other losses, all requiring enormous reconstruction efforts.(JG)

Or, alternatively, the US could choose to continue with its heavy reliance on military production and trade, an option fraught with all manner of hazards. For the world had had quite enough of war and desperately needed to rebuild in non- aggressive sustainably-peaceful ways. And to gamble on militarism offered only short-term gain for some at the cost of progressively increasing instability: economically, socially, politically, and most catastrophically militarily and environmentally. Throughout history industrialized militarism has always ended in mutual destruction of the contenders, and with the recent addition of nuclear weapons that could only vastly compound the hazards, including that of mutual annihilation, as many including Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, Admiral William D. Leahy and George F. Kennan warned.(PDE1 ; PDE2 ; JFK ; WDL ; GFK3)

Tragically, however, instead of choosing world leadership, it chose militarism in the cause of focused wealth along with world hegemony. But, of course, for Americans and the world at large, there had to be a ‘justification’, a firm reason for the huge financial diversions that would be involved. Thus required was an enemy of great proportions threatening the United States and its way of life. Russia, which had just come to the end of a devastatingly destructive war was severely damaged and wanting to focus on rebuilding. Moreover, its leaders had never been a military threat to the West. Yet, ever since its Revolution the ‘virus’ of communist ideas had constantly gnawed at the minds of Western leaders. Accordingly, their obsession to destroy the ‘virus’ at its supposed source lived on, their recent Ally Russia immediately named the current ‘enemy’, the alleged evil force with military designs on the West, including Western Europe.

6 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved Hence, as Churchill’s biographer Martin Gilbert reveals, within 3 days of Germany’s surrender (May 9, 1945) Churchill’s telegram to President Truman, described Russia’s success in driving Hitler’s armies back to Berlin, as, “...this enormous Muscovite advance into the centre of Europe...... ”, followed by, “…. meanwhile the attention of our peoples will be occupied in inflicting severities upon Germany, which is ruined and prostrate, and it could be open to the Russians in a very short time to advance if they chose to the North Sea and the Atlantic.”(MG2, 685-6) President Truman being of the same mind, Churchill in his Fulton Missouri speech (March 1946) claimed that the war-time Allied meeting of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, which agreed to grant Russia a protective “sphere of influence” status in Eastern Europe, had thereby divided Europe with an “Iron Curtain”. Yet, as Churchill admitted, “I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines.” However, as President Truman had already made clear, the main instrument to counter Russia’s hopes for a communist Europe, would be the atom bomb, that being produced, further developed and on July1, 1946 tested over Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Thus the ‘Cold War’ was confirmed, then extended by further claims that Russia was intent on military advances around the world, Western Europe included.(WC6 ; GFK3)

And while George F. Kennan, historian and US Diplomat in Russia during and after the war, shared Churchill’s concern over Russia’s aim of ‘…expansion of their power and doctrines” in Europe, he cautioned, “What I was then advocating for our Government was a policy of "containment" of Soviet expansionist pressures, a policy aimed at halting the expansion of Soviet power into Central and Western Europe. I viewed this as primarily a diplomatic and political task, though not wholly without military implications. I considered that if and when we had succeeded in persuading the Soviet leadership that the continuation of these expansionist pressures not only held out for them no hopes for success but would be, in many respects, to their disadvantage, then the moment would have come for serious talks with them about the future of Europe.

But when, some three years later, this moment had arrived - when we had made our point with the Marshall Plan, with the successful resistance to the Berlin blockade and other measures - when the lesson I wanted to see us convey to Moscow had been successfully conveyed, then it was one of the great disappointments of my life to discover that neither our Government nor our Western European allies had any interest in entering into such discussions at all. What they and the others wanted from Moscow, with respect to the future of Europe, was essentially ‘unconditional surrender.’ They were prepared to wait for it. And this was the beginning of the 40 years of cold war.”(GFK2 ; GFK3)

Thus, Kennan’s views were cast aside and an alleged Russian ‘threat’ of military penetration into Europe and the Middle East was repeatedly stated by the US as

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 7 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved justification for its post-war ever-increasing arms production and ever-expanding militarism, including the focus on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. Hence, the nuclear stand-off with Russia that expanded through NATO, plus its economic dependency on ever-growing arms production and sales, along with military bases and the never-ending series of illegal regime changes across the world. Like the views of Albert Einstein, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, George Kennan’s comments on the events of this so-called ‘Cold War’ are highly revealing of its precarious suicidal nature and world-destabilizing effects from a nuclear stand-off, failure of which (whether by design or accident) would extinguish Western civilization.(GFK3 ; JFK ; PDE1 ; PDE2 ; IB9, 19-23) Likewise the effects of the US’s ever-expanding militarism on the weakening of its claims to world leadership, its national security, and American society, - through its utter dependency on militarism. For, as Kennan explained, “….this military-industrial establishment has become a veritable addiction of American society - an addiction from which American society could no longer free itself without the most severe withdrawal pains. Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy. The truth of the matter is that the greater portion of American society that lies outside the defense establishment is rapidly falling in a position resembling that of much of civilian society in northern Europe toward the end of the Thirty Years' War: reduced to trailing behind the armies as camp-followers, hoping to live off the remnants from the military stores and kitchens.”(GFK3 ; IB9, Appendix 2 ; PDE2 ; NeC)

Hence, notwithstanding the US’s post-WW2 claims to responsible world leadership, its subsequent actions did nothing to reassure its peoples. Thus, as a recent medical graduate, I (IB) was greatly disturbed by Australia’s Prime Minister Menzies’ declaration on his return from a London strategic affairs conference that our nation must ready itself for an expected Third World War “with international communism” by the end of 1953.(IB8, 53-56) Now, looking back, all such smacked of a re-run of past Western practices aimed at world hegemony via the time- dishonored mercantile system that Smith condemned for its aggressive militaristic ways of control over others’ lands and resources. Hence the importance of studies of overseas ‘regime changes’ by the USA since WW2.

Illegal Regime Changes with Horrifying Tragic Consequences

Highly recommended are William Blum’s detailed studies of post-WW2 regime changes.(WB) Here we focus on Middle East examples which continue to have truly tragic consequences, - beginning with Iran in the early 1950s when its parliament led by Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s oil industry. Strongly challenged by British and American oil interests, that was overcome short of military action, Mossadegh forced to give way to the young Shah Reza Pahlevi

8 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved who was totally malleable to American control. In exchange for supplies of oil Iran was increasingly over-armed while the Shah became ever more brutally repressive to a suffering people, until in 1979 Iranians occupied the US Embassy, the Shah fleeing to the US. A frustrated US promptly changed course, removing Iraq’s terrorist status, increasing its oil purchases and greatly encouraging its 1980 attack on Iran through the provision of much hi-tech weaponry, military intelligence, financial credits and considerable assistance with biological and chemical weapons. All told, international arms sales (from all sources to both sides) amounted to some $48 billion. The awful result being 8 years of mutually destructive war in which over a million young Iraqi and Iranian lives were lost, countless others horribly injured, all illegally aided and abetted by the US and other outside powers including the socialist Soviet Union, a point stressed because its failure to set a good example made abolition of the appalling arms trade all the more problematic. (PW ; CJ1 ; CJ2, 224-227)

Then the greatly indebted war-damaged Iraq was recast as a US enemy. And when, following a border dispute over oil in 1991, Iraq invaded Kuwait, the US came in with Desert Storm, its first Gulf War which, despite its ‘success’ in encouraging Iraq’s Shias to revolt, stopped short of deposing Saddam Hussein. Tragically, its clearly illegal ‘shock and awe’ brutal air campaign: 110,000 aerial sorties, 85,000 tons of bombs on Iraq’s cities and people, wounding and killing hundreds of thousands (never counted!) also disabled Iraq’s civil life-support infrastructure including water supply/purification, power stations, hospitals, schools, irrigation and sewage works, communications: – electronic, road, rail, bridges.(CJ2, 225-6) Further, these atrocities were followed by 10 years of debilitating economic sanctions against civil society, men, women and children, the UN estimating 500,000 child deaths. Thus, with Iraq reduced to a pre-industrial state, there was little left to crush.(CJ1 ; CJ4 ; RC ) Indeed, nothing left with which to retaliate via terrorist attack, the only means possible for weak countries. However, in the same year the USSR hoped to withdraw from the Cold War, - (and did in late 1991 once George H. W. Bush assured Gorbachev that the US would honor its post-WW2 border agreements (BG) See Footnote**1), - there occurred two savage attacks on US

1 Footnote** In one sense the end of the Cold War was a significant challenge for the US because it negated any ‘justification’ of its extreme militarism, - hence, no such admission. Instead, the claim of its need to ‘combat terrorism’. On the other hand the Cold War’s end via the USSR’s withdrawal might appear to indicate that the neocon’s version of capitalism was a triumphal system without peer, as Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (1992) implied. Hence, there arose among upper echelons of US Administration neocons a feeling of absolute triumphalism. For, inspired by ideas from the Project for the New American Century, these folk dreamed of ‘The Revolution in Military Affairs’ to gain ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ at home, abroad, and in space, such enabling the newly-‘authorized’ ‘Pre-emptive Attacks’ on ‘Axis of Evil’ weak states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea, including the use of low- yield nuclear ‘Bunker Busters’ to destroy assumed ‘underground chemical and biological weapons installations’.(DA ; GWC)

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 9 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved African embassies (Kenya and Tanzania) the prompt response (August 20, 1989) being a cruise missile assault on Sudan’s new Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant which produced antibiotics and immunizing agents for people and farm animals. That began what Madeline Albright termed “The War of the Future”, what became the ongoing “War on Terrorism”, such foreshadowing what soon became the US’s heightened means for further regime changes aimed at the territories and resources of weaker states, especially the oil-rich. However, as always, regime changes had to be ‘justified’, as when in February 1993 Al Qaeda terrorists exploded a bomb at the base of New York’s Twin Towers, and when on September 11, 2001, presumed Islamic terrorists attacked and felled New York’s Twin Towers.

Initially, although that gave rise to talk of Iraq’s responsibility, it soon shifted to Osama bin Laden who during the 1980s had been fighting in Afghanistan. Here one has to keep in mind the end of the 1980s when, partly due to stiff opposition by US-trained Saudi Arabians, Mujahiddeen fighters like Osama bin Laden, the Russians agreed to leave Afghanistan. However, those Saudis returning home were promptly urged by hardline Wahhabi Islamists (affronted by US transformations across Saudi Arabia (FL1)) to re-train as terrorists for attacks against the US. Hence the illogicality of the US attacking Afghanistan, its people, cities and countryside via horrifying ‘shock and awe’ aerial bombardments and (despite frozen winter conditions) severe economic sanctions. The suspect Al Qaeda folk like bin Laden were never found but tens of thousands of Afghan ‘suspects’ were captured and interrogation-tortured, thousands ending up without trial in Abu Ghraib, the US prison on Cuba.

At all events, notwithstanding that 15 of the 19 attackers on New York’s World Trade Center’s Twin Towers on November 9, 2001 were Saudi Arabians, it came back to ‘plan A’, to invade Iraq on the grounds of its alleged ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and supposed imminent attack on Europe. Lacking UN support and few convinced, it nevertheless went ahead, war on the grossly weakened Iraq declared won on May 1, 2003 and with its Sunni government replaced by Shias and its Sunni police, intelligence and army disbanded, Iraq’s future control might have seemed certain. However, as should have been obvious, with disillusioned unemployed Sunni army personnel on the streets, clashes between Sunnis and Shias broke out. And while at first that was spontaneous, it was soon greatly exploited, enormously expanded by ISIS’s Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi whose aim was uncontrollable terrorism, total chaos through indiscriminate destruction, regardless of the faction targeted.

Should Footnote**1 sound like some newly-arrived transitory aberration dreamed up by just a few high level neocons like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, etc., one should keep in mind that ignoring advice from some senior Congressional and military figures, its mindless self-serving guide-lines went back to the very beginnings of the post-WW2 hyper-militarized era. In recent years this

10 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved has been clearly documented by William Blum 2001 (WB) and General Wesley Clark who commanded American forces in Desert Storm, he later becoming Supreme Commander NATO forces in Europe.(see below)

General Wesley Clark’s 2007 Lecture, ‘America’s Policy ‘Coup’ Thanks to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, this highly revealing lecture dealing with the policy coup engineered by US Administration neocons at the end of the Cold War (1991) can be heard and seen online, complete with its running text transcript. Here, giving a taste of its message, we’ve included a few short quotations. But first just to indicate its profound significance, a short note on its author. Seeking to bring a less hawkish perspective to the White House, General Wesley Clark sought the presidency in the election of 2004. After the campaign, Clark continued his crusade for a better America, his vision of a responsible foreign policy. Wesley Clark is a retired four-star General of the United States Army, valedictorian of his class at West Point, Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford (Master's Degree in Economics) later graduating from the Command and General Staff College with a Master's Degree in Military Science. He spent 34 years in the Army and the Department of Defense, receiving many military decorations, several honorary knighthoods, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Wesley Clark: “…. And what happened in 9/11….. we didn’t have American understanding of it and we had instead a policy coup….. he said, I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office, it says we are going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years. We are going to start with Iraq and then we are going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran seven countries in five years….. it came back to me, a 1991 meeting I had with Paul Wolfowitz you know, in 2001 he was Deputy Secretary of Defense, but in 1991 he was the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, it’s the number three position of the Pentagon. …. And he said, but one thing we did learn, he said, we learned that we can use our military in the region in the Middle East and the Soviets won’t stop us. He said, and we have got about five or ten years to clean up those all Soviet client regimes; Syria, Iran, Iraq, – before the next great super power comes on to challenge us…. It was a pretty stunning thing, I mean the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments?, it’s not to sort of deter a conflict?, we are going to have to invade countries? and you know, my mind was spinning. …. It was like a nugget that you hold on to. This country was taken over by a group of people with a policy coup, Wolfowitz and Cheney and Rumsfeld and you could name a half dozen other collaborators from the ‘Project for a New American Century’. They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control. …. All you have to do is read the Weekly Standard and Bill Kristol and he blabber mouthed it out all over the world…. They could hardly wait to finish Iraq, so they could move into Syria. …. “ Et cetera, but its most important to get the full picture by seeing and hearing it in context. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY2DKzastu8 (GWC)

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 11 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved Altogether revealing since it explains the background thinking of many decades preceding the invasion of Iraq (2003) and the subsequent regime changes and attempts (all illegal) over Syria, Iran, the Lebanon, Libya and other Middle East states. But let us return to the ‘defeated’ Iraq, immersed in out of control turmoil. For even although the initiator of what became ISIS, al-Zarqawi was killed (2006) and his forces scattered, ISIS did not go away, its forces re-forming in NW Iraq under Abu Bakr Baghdadi, they soon invading Syria, violently car-bombing Damascus and, joining with local rebels, attempting to depose Syria’s Bashar al- Assad government. By 2008, - 5 years since Iraq’s invasion began - official figures indicated that 4,000 US soldiers had died, plus 30,000 wounded. Yet while ISIS forces’ systematized destruction was continuing to expand and after nearly nine years of war, US army forces were preparing to leave Iraq, - the last convoy of U.S. soldiers departing early December 2011. And by then the cost had risen to almost 4,500 American and (uncounted) tens of thousands Iraqi lives, plus their country left in total disorder.

Moreover, by 2013, Baghdadi’s forces had captured much of Syria, destroying wide areas of cities, - homes, hospitals and schools, killing and displacing large numbers of Syrians, thousands of volunteer ISIS fighters having come from Europe, Tunisia, Russia, etc. (JSa7 ; UNHCR) At the same time, ISIS continued its campaign to conquer Iraq, taking many cities and by July 2014 occupying Mosul with its Great Mosque, Baghdadi proclaiming himself ‘ruler of the global Caliphate’ - some 5 million people. For more of this history, see The Secret History of ISIS, in PBS Frontline.(FL2)

But returning to Syria, although US sanctions had been applied since 2006 with internal rebellion demanding relief, there had been little outside interference until August 2011 when President Obama agreed to declare, re. Syria’s Head of State, “Assad must go”, this leading to greatly heightened attacks on his government by ISIS and other Al-Qaeda (i.e., outside) rebel forces including Al-Nusra. Very strange, for one must ask why such an out-of-the-blue call, - as if Assad had simply reached his use-by date. Moreover, this move was clearly illegal under the UN Charter’s obligatory prohibitions of which the US was a principal architect, - specifically to erase “the scourge of war”, Article 2 (4) prohibiting all actions aimed at regime change by political and/or military force. Clearly, national policy would have to be pseudo-amnesic hegemonic obsessional to pursue that course!

Not only this, but all such waywardness is over-shadowed by what followed just a couple of years on. For in 2013, plans for a US ‘Shock and Awe’ assault on Syria and its people (as on Iraq 1991) was far advanced, Syria being only by a hair’s breadth saved from the same truly horrible fate.(SH) Aimed at ‘justifying’ this Shock and Awe horror, a False-Flag attack was made on a Damascus suburb, Ghouta, using sarin manufactured from precursors originating in Europe conveyed via Turkish intelligence agents to ISIS/Al-Qaeda forces in Syria. Hence an ISIS

12 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved nerve gas attack with truly hideous outcomes on innocent civilians, including hundreds of children. As such an outcome was expected, US Secretary of State John Kerry was ready with vociferous charges against the Assad government, e.g., “…the Assad regime, and only, undeniably, the Assad regime, unleashed an outrageous chemical attack against its own citizens. … In their lust to hold on to power, [they] were willing to infect the air of Damascus with a poison that killed innocent mothers and fathers and hundreds of their children, their lives all snuffed out by gas in the early morning of August 21st.” …(paras)… “And as we debate, the world wonders, not whether Assad’s regime executed the worst chemical weapons attack of the 21st century — that fact I think is now beyond question — the world wonders whether the United States of America will consent through silence to standing aside while this kind of brutality is allowed to happen without consequence.”(SH; RMcG) Well, we know what the planned ‘consequence’ was to be: preparations well advanced: - the ‘Shock and Awe’ assault on an entire people with more tragic horror, pain and death for these most unfortunate Syrians, an utterly immoral sadistic treatment planned by far-off power-obsessed neocon cowards.(RMcG1) (Ray McGovern, former CIA Intelligence Analyst for 27 years). However, although initially agreeing with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to proceed with the Pentagon neocons’ plans for the ‘shock and awe’ response, once President Obama was alerted by several US intelligence analysts and their chief, James Clapper, of the underlying plan, he insisted on the legally-required Congressional approval of war. And when this was declined, and with the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, General Martin Dempsey advising similarly, he wisely backed off much to the chagrin of the neocons.(SH) What a relief, but sadly that did not stop the ongoing Al-Qaeda/ISIS destruction and cruel attacks supported by the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar. Moreover, the recent (April 4, 2017) international crisis over the assertion that Assad engaged in another allegedly deliberate chemical attack on his own people, has brought former CIA intelligence analyst Ray McGovern to report information gained from US military sources to the effect that the Syrian air attack was aimed at a storage depot believed to hold weapons, but which turned out to be a store for all manner of chemicals including fertilizers (which blew up) spreading a multitude of other chemicals including containers of sarin nerve gas that had such tragic effects, - as he relates in the linked you-tube account.(RMcG2) Hence, his appeal to President Trump that before taking further action he, as did President Obama, go to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA Intelligence Analysts for checking the evidence on Assad’s supposed guilt before it’s too late to prevent yet further tragedy. Supporting that absolute necessity are many highly-informed individuals, US citizens including the New York Times Seymour Hersh (SH), former UK Ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford (PF) and others across the world, all stressing the urgency of proper investigation before rushing to judgement, many fearing the likelihood of more cruel False Flag action and uncontrollable chaos across the Middle East.(SH ; PF)

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 13 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved In another criticism, using the White House Intelligence Report issued on April 11, 2017 concerning the alleged nerve gas attack of April 4, 2017, in Khan Shaykhun, Syria as its basis, MIT Emeritus Professor Theodore A. Postol, carefully reviewed the document, concluding, “…the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria at roughly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017.”(TP1) For, as he subsequently reported on April 21, 2017 (TP2) in his IMPORTANT CORRECTION TO The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur: Analysis of the Times and Locations of Critical Events in the Alleged Nerve Agent Attack at 7 AM on April 4, 2017 in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, the US document is so inadequate that it completely fails to establish that such an attack did occur.(TP1&2) All the more outrageous is it that even before its own National Security Council intelligence report was released to Congress and the Public (April 11), US President Trump launched the Tomahawk cruise missile attacks of April 7 on a Syrian airfield. Indeed, especially so because that ‘intelligence report’ lacked the backing of senior military figures, experienced CIA Intelligence Analysts and Head of National Intelligence, James Clapper, - nor did it have Congressional approval.

Further, this ‘intelligence’ report, while replete with unsubstantiated assertions, provides little evidence beyond the public media video and other pictorial illustrations released by mainstream media outlets, - illustrations which fail to support the document’s claims. For example, that about 7 am there was an aerial attack involving a sarin-containing 12.2 cm. diameter cylinder (sealed both ends) that showed a longitudinal implosion fracture which would allow any contents e.g. sarin, to escape lying in a ~1x2m. diameter shallow crater on a road just North of the city, no other alleged impact site being referred to. How fired or dropped from an aircraft such an object could produce that crater is not explained. Also there is no record of casualties in that locality, the only one referred to being a nearby dead goat. Yet, according to the US National Security Council intelligence report:“ The United States is confident that the Syrian regime conducted a chemical weapons attack, using the nerve agent sarin, against its own people in the town of Khan Shaykhun in southern Idlib Province on 4 April 2017. According to observers at the scene, the attack resulted in at least 50 and up to 100 fatalities (including many children), with hundreds of additional injuries.” Given that statement, there was a clear obligation to reveal photographic evidence taken by Officials in properly protective clothing, or by position-verifiable drones (known to be used) but no such images appeared.

Moreover, one detects tell-tale ignorance of even of the number of fatalities. As well, casualties stated to be from the ~7am sarin attack of April 4 were not reported or photographed until some 4-5 hours later, and even then nowhere near the crater, they being shown in other, distant and diverse localities, their sun shadows confirming day times much later than the reported ~7am attack; however the photographs of several Idlib Health Directorate Officials examining the ruptured

14 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved cylinder in the crater, were not carried out until about mid-day April 6. And yet included in the evidence are photos of dead birds said to be victims of the sarin. In contrast, despite the absence of proper protective gear against sarin, numbers of Idlib Health Directorate Officials appeared totally unaffected when close to the crater at 10.50 am on April 4. Likewise, another individual (date and time unknown) with dead caged canaries judged positive for sarin toxicity. (TP1&2)

Indeed, if we consider this ‘evidence’, essentially the mere assertion of a deliberate attack by Assad forces against his own people, - together with the sure knowledge from the UK’s Defence laboratory at Porton Down, Wiltshire, that the sample of sarin used to attack innocent men women and children on August 21, 2013 obtained by British Intelligence was identifiably different from any of the sarin held within Syria’s arsenal, you would conclude that the April 4 attack is yet another False Flag dirty trick engineered by the US in conjunction with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, ISIS and the cooperation of Britain’s MI6.( TP1&2 ; SH ; RMcG2 ; PF) And, as Hersh points out, the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had since Spring 2013, believed the Al-Nusrah Front (ANF) was likely developing sarin through the provision of precursors via Turkey and Saudi Arabia.(SH) Further, Hersh indicates that such processes aimed at arming members of the al-Qaeda network went back to early 2012 when the CIA with Turkey and Saudi Arabia set up what it called the ‘rat line’, a back-channel arms route to transfer arms from Libya into Syria.(SH) Its operations were run by CIA director, David Petraeus, but that direct involvement ceased after US Ambassador David Stevens and three others were killed by a local militia, operations then taken over by Saudi Arabia and Turkey.(SH)

Altogether, all of this has the makings of a great tragedy for a President to allow the current-day neocons to succeed in confidence tricks to gain support for more and more wars and other dirty tricks in the cause of greed and unlawful gain. As noted above, the worst almost came off in August, 2013 when President Obama went close to heightening the war against Syria in response to a falsely-alleged use of sarin by Assad’s forces. For only at the last minute were the Syrian people saved when he insisted that without verifiable evidence, Assad must not be judged responsible. As General Wesley Clark has repeatedly warned, the neocons of the Pentagon and elsewhere have long had a very bad record in performing such dirty tricks and it is high time they are displaced from their powerful positions in the US system before they do untold damage across the world.

Previous Eras Revisited - and Another Chance to Rectify ‘the System’?

Looking back for inspirational examples of honest behavior, it is always encouraging to realize the commonly high ethical standards of ordinary folk in their dealings with one another. Thus it is the norm in person-to-person trade for exchanges of goods/services to be accomplished in a friendly fashion, with satisfaction gained on both sides. Indeed, as earlier mentioned it was that which

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 15 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved inspired Adam Smith to believe that the same principle could succeed at all levels of society (and internationally) such that all would be both better off financially as well as far more secure and happier. Yet at the same time he realized how in ‘certain circles’, hang-ups centered on unearned ‘privilege’ were continuing to get in the way. And despite his wise counsel, these hang-ups lingered on and on such that, as now still, previous eras obsessed with Imperial supremacy practices continued, despite serious counter-productivities altogether similar to our present era’s catastrophic injustices and wars. For example, wars like WWI that destroyed far more than gained - even for the so-called winners. Just think of Britain and France, losing their treasured sons (e.g., Rupert Brooke, Raymond Asquith, etc.), their best brains thoughtlessly thrown away; the material stagnation that emerged; the illusory lure of ‘victors’ gains (others’ colonies, oil-bearing lands); - the entire misconceived trade ‘competition’ ending in deep Depression and an even more destructive Second World War. And yet, given the ever-amplifying effects of industry on output and its parallel increases in destructive power, their disastrous outcomes were altogether predictable, hence preventable. Moreover, despite the present system’s ever-expanding inequities, destruction and chaos, powerful Western ‘leaders’ have been so determined to retain the ‘winner-takes-all’ system of privilege, that the adoption of Smith’s version of a fair-trading capitalist economy (while a useful ‘front’) must, in their view, remain ‘totally unacceptable’.

It is as if the mirage of endlessly-expanding wealth concentrated at the top has a totally hypnotizing effect over the obscenely obvious. For the warnings of disaster have long been sounded from early times, e.g., via Jesus of Nazareth, Edward Gibbon, his friend Adam Smith, - through to John Hobson, Michael Edwardes, Dwight Eisenhower, George Kennan, and Barbara Tuchman. (EG ; JH ; ME ; GFK3 ; PDE2 ; BT1 ; BT3) Even today, many recognize the downward slide of Western civilization towards its demise as we blindly ‘stay the course’ waiting for ‘something’ to turn up. And yet, if humankind simply followed the survival ‘rules’ readily available from Nature’s cooperative exchanges (intra- and inter-species) underlying the millions and millions of evolutionary selection successes (cross- pollinations, mutual adaptations, etc., etc.) all would be well, e.g., the cooperative win-win outcomes bees promote as they cross-fertilize millions of other species, the fruits of which provide essential conditions for the survival and growth of myriads of other plant and animal species. And, given such insights from multitudes of like examples, Homo sapiens must seize on Smith’s economic model for increased well-being and species sustainability before it is too late. After all, as we learn from the lessons of evolution, even Smith’s ’invisible hand’ allusion fails to reflect (as falsely claimed) the virtues of self-centredness, it in fact indicating the imperatives of group survival through economic cooperation. Thus we need to keep in mind the obvious connections people like Jeffrey Sachs have stressed, the West’s historical aggressive exploitations of the Islamic East as the basis of its current chaotic ‘blow-back’ disasters there.(JSa1 ; JSa3 ; JSa4 ; JSa6 ; JSa7 ; JSa8 ; JSa9)

16 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved For example, from 2015, “We in the West hate to acknowledge – and most refuse to believe – that our leaders have been flagrantly wasteful of Muslim lives for a century now, in countless wars and military encounters instigated by overwhelming Western power. What is the message to Muslims of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003? More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians – a very conservative estimate – died in a war that was based on utterly false pretenses. The US has never apologized, much less even recognized the civilian slaughter.

Or consider Syria, where an estimated 200,000 Syrians have recently died, 3.7 million have fled the country, and 7.6 million have been internally displaced in a civil war that was stoked in no small part by the US, Saudi Arabia, and other allied powers. Since 2011, the CIA and US allies have poured in weapons, finance, and training in an attempt to topple President Bashar al-Assad. For the US and its allies, the war is little more than a proxy battle to weaken Assad’s patrons, Iran and Russia. Yet Syrian civilians are the cannon fodder. Long before there was Islamist terrorism in the West, the United Kingdom, France, and the US relied on diplomatic chicanery and launched coups, wars, and covert operations in the Middle East to assert and maintain Western political control over the region. Historians know this sordid story, but most Westerners do not (in no small part because many of the interventions have been covert). Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire a century ago, Western powers have sought to control the Middle East for a variety of reasons, including claims on oil, access to international sea routes, Israel’s security, and geopolitical competition with Russia in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.” (JSa4, 3,4) Since this article (Jan. 15, 2015) casualty numbers and other human costs have expanded enormously.

So, how is it that ISIS, a relatively small force of some 25,000, can persist with its utterly destructive ways? Well, as Sachs points out, “Despite US President Barack Obama’s pledge in September 2014 to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS, the US and its allies, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel (behind the scenes), have been focusing instead on toppling Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. ...…the CIA has long armed and trained Sunni jihadists through covert operations funded by Saudi Arabia. In turn, these jihadists gave birth to ISIS, which is a direct, if unanticipated, consequence of the policies pursued by the CIA and its Saudi partners. …. the US attempt to fight a two-front war against both Assad and ISIS has failed. Whenever Assad has been weakened, Sunni jihadists, including ISIS and al-Nusra Front, have filled the vacuum.”(JSa9, para.3)

It is important here to stress again that forced regime change in Syria (as any nation) is totally illegal. Hence, “The US foreign-policy establishment blames Russian President Vladimir Putin for defending Assad, while Russia blames the US for trying to overthrow him. These complaints might seem symmetrical, but they’re not. The attempt by the US and its allies to overthrow Assad violates the UN Charter, while Russia’s support of Assad is consistent with Syria’s right of self-

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 17 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved defense under that charter. Yes, Assad is a despot, but the UN Charter does not give license to any country to choose which despots to depose.”(JSa9) (July5, 2016) Great powers not excepted; and remember, the US was the leading author of that post-WW2 legally-binding Charter introduced to prevent all further wars.

Yet, despite that clear-cut situation, the attacks on Syria still continue to grow stronger with the combined CIA-Saudi Arabian attack supported by ISIS forces. Hence the terrible ever-rising costs to Syria, its people, homes, institutions and countryside, for by early 2016 the total human and material costs had become staggeringly large. UNHCR estimating at least 400,000 deaths, displacements of over 10 million, 6.3 million food insecure, 4 million as expatriate refugees, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Philippo Grandi declaring in February 2016, “Syria is the biggest humanitarian and refugee crisis of our time, a continuing cause of suffering for millions”.(JSa7; UNHCR)

Hence, the current international military interventions in Syria and elsewhere must be reversed, hopefully insisted on by all members of the UN Security Council, none of which should have illegally engaged that way in the first place. For, as Sachs emphasizes, “....stop the refugee surge by ending the Syrian war immediately. This can be accomplished by ending the CIA-Saudi alliance to overthrow Bashar al- Assad, thereby enabling Assad (with Russian and Iranian backing) to defeat the Islamic State and stabilize Syria (with a similar approach in neighboring Iraq). America’s addiction to regime change (in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria) is the deep cause of Europe’s refugee crisis. End the addiction, and the recent refugees could return home.”(JSa8 ; c.f. also JSa7) Yes, indeed, sane collaboration within the Security Council should have led to the total disengagement of outside powers, they at the same time undertaking urgent measures to get ISIS and other non-state actors totally out of the picture.

But instead, consistent with General Wesley Clark’s revelations about what US Administrations had been planning for decades, their ongoing aim has been to continue illegal regime changes, some pseudo ‘successful’ (Iraq, Libya) some stalled (Lebanon) while others, like Syria, being worked on still with the help of Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, UK, France, Australia and ISIS. Of course, the expectation that ISIS would serve the purposes of the US and others - and then ‘go away’ was always pure delusion, for its aim being maximum chaos, it simply ‘changes sides’ as it goes to the highest bidder.(Wes Clark) Hence, the counter- productivity of US persistence towards regime change in Syria. Yet, while it has no chance of ‘success’, this horribly destructive war engenders considerable risk of tipping the region into greater instability and an even far wider, utterly wasteful and more tragic war.

That is because the Middle East is already one of many world regions beset by conflicts over competition to garner the benefits and wealth from the world’s fast-

18 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved diminishing reserves of oil and natural gas, mostly in other people’s backyards, - the earlier history of which is so thoroughly detailed in Daniel Yergin’s classic study.(DY). For, as Michael Klare points out in Twenty-First-Century Energy Wars, conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, South Sudan, Ukraine, South China Seas and elsewhere are increasingly fuelled by ambitions for oil, natural gas and the wealth generated.(MK3 ; MK4) And with ISIS and al-Nusra controlling most of Syria’s oil fields, the same motivation is also central to ISIS’ ‘grand strategy’, as in Iraq. Also integral to the issue is the pipe transport of gas and oil over others’ territories, as in Syria, via regime change rather than negotiation and mutually- agreed contracts.

However, as Christina Lin illustrates, the countries to be made ‘secure’ for this purpose are subjected to the forced regime change which is strongly resented and lawfully resisted by them, - along with its willing allies.(CL, & see maps) Likewise the work of Major Bob Taylor on pipeline politics in Syria explains how Saudi Arabia and Qatar (assisted by ISIS, Al Qaeda/Nusra) and backed by the US, Turkey, Israel, France, Britain and, God help us, Australia) are aiming to depose Assad so they can control the government, then run their gas line through Syria and Turkey, thus netting them greater wealth. As he concludes, “Reports that disregard the pipeline and its geopolitical implications ignore the elephant in the room.” So, in working out how the war on Syria could and should immediately be stopped, let us not forget that these planned beneficiaries of the various pipeline schemes are very much ‘elephants in the room’, they instigating the illegal war on Syria. http://armedforcesjournal.com/pipeline-politics-in-syria/

As a deeply insightful highly informative historical account of the post-WW2 background on how the US got so many nations, including itself, into the present Middle East morass, there is a simply ‘must-read’ online account by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which wonderfully complements ‘modern’ Imperial history recounted by Jeffrey D. Sachs and others, it being all of a piece.(RFK ; JSa,1,3,4,6-9 ; WC3 ; WC4) For, it is just like a re-run of colonial times, small weak sovereign nations being assaulted by far more powerful ones aiming to steal their assets to make themselves the richer and more powerful, - yet in the process getting themselves into deeper and deeper trouble. In today’s post-WW2 world every instance has been and remains illegal as outlined above. But overlooked, ‘tolerated’ because the US, the world’s current top power remains the prime offender. Hence, continuation of war against Syria instigated by the US, supported by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, France, Britain, Australia - from the air, ground force ‘rebels’ coming largely from mercenaries ISIS and al-Nusra, a combination of overwhelming force without motivation towards target restraint or discrimination. War on the weak lacking any plan for pacific resolution.

In assaulted cities the outcomes are predictably macabre in the extreme: a defenceless civil population, men, women, children along with their habitats

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 19 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved mercilessly attacked day and night by ground and air artillery. People slaughtered beyond recognition, hideously-wounded, surviving but helpless, no pain relief, buildings wrecked, collapsed; water and other services disabled, outside assistance only sometimes possible, millions of citizens displaced, widely scattered, dismayed, - as wandering refugees with scant hope.

And yet, even in this 7th year, Syrians have stuck it out perhaps expecting that the world, through a revitalized United Nations, would insist on their UN-guaranteed independent nation status. To date, sadly, ‘the world’ seems distracted not just by sport, but claims that Syria’s leader Assad is a monster, not a fit person to lead. But let us repeat Professor Jeffrey Sach’s point that ‘The attempt by the US and its allies to overthrow Assad violates the UN Charter, while Russia’s support of Assad is consistent with Syria’s right of self-defense under that charter. Yes, Assad is a despot, but the UN Charter does not give license to any country to choose which despots to depose.”(JSa9) Indeed, so, for its an obvious case of retaining your favourite despots over those you have decided ‘must go’. Moreover, such an immature cruel regime-change method, going back as it does to the Dark Ages, - attacking a totally innocent civil population, - deserves to be promptly reversed before it becomes accepted as the ‘norm’, it being far too close to that already. As well, one should consider the likelihood of Syrians sticking it out, not because they love their leader but because, like the Russians in WW2, they are determined to retain their nation’s independence despite the truly horrific losses of their people, houses, hospitals etc. And while that holds, the likelihood of an ISIS take-over and extension of the war into one even more uncontrollable grows ever more acute. For the numbers of ‘players’ with conflicting interests in the present Syrian conflict underscores the probability of such an outcome. After all it is but a few years since the triumph of a ‘successful’ invasion of Iraq caused the birth of ISIS, its forces within a few years invading Syria and, linking to dissident ‘rebels’, leading the assault on Assad’s Damascus.(FL2) Yet their aim was never to hand over control to anyone else, but to increase turmoil and chaos throughout the Middle East and beyond, on the road to world-wide Sunni supremacy. Accordingly, the best option for the US remains: i.e., to call it quits and let things settle down so that with help from within the UN system the Syrian war is brought to an end. Otherwise, given the ambitions of Saudi Arabia and Turkey’s President, with their different agendas in aiming to expand the war regionally to ensure control over the Kurds; and their planned oil/gas-line operations through Yemen to Mukalla (Gulf of Aden) and Syria via Turkey to Europe, might inadvertently end up greatly expanding it into totally uncontrollable widespread conflict. The Urgency of Peaceful Economic Remediation to Stabilize the World The present chaotic state of the world’s ‘Western’ economies emphasizes the urgency of changing before it is too late. For, as we see, the long-dominant fast- failing mercantile political economic system that Adam Smith condemned for its

20 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved injustices and aggressive war-generating behavior has, as Gavin Kennedy put it, come to a dead end.(GK) Indeed, so much so that if further prolonged it can only accelerate the ongoing self-destructive process that threatens its addicted civilizations.(IB4, 3) For already such trends are so extreme they may soon become irreversible via, e.g., uncontainable conflicts, resource depletion, increasingly damaging pollution levels, - chemical, thermal etc., glacier/ice-cap melting, oceanic warming, deforestation, ever more unstable weather, climate change, accelerating species extinctions - from which we are not immune.(FBR) Surveying the accelerated growth of these human aberrations through modern history, many will ask how could it be that our species which had such initial success in cooperative survival during evolution (i.e., until settled agriculture) has by now engaged in such widespread inequality and discord, with wars across itself, the plundering of other states, including the despoiling of Nature (its natural capital) that mutual extinction is a distinct possibility? An issue long concerning humanity’s greatest minds, for example, Jesus of Nazareth, Edward Gibbon, Adam Smith, John Hobson, George F. Kennan, Barbara Tuchman, Pope Francis. Hence, if we have expectations of our species’ long-term survival, we must deal promptly with the problem of steadily rising inequality which continues to destabilize the world’s life-preserving Natural balances. Yet, how can the West pull back and redirect its economies in positive self- sustaining ways? We believe one long-known solution is a form of ‘capitalist’ economy built on fairness and trust which, given acceptance and good will could in any democratic society, be largely self-regulatory. Here we hold to a serious re- consideration of Adam Smith’s careful analysis and commonsense advice in his The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, - advice business leaders have flatly rejected over the past 250 years, they inventing the fictitious ‘Adam Smith’ who favoured self-serving gain above all. And yet, aware of the system’s self-obsessed feudal origins across Europe, Smith well understood how its self-privileged beneficiaries managed it, cheating via low wages, government- granted monopolies and other wealth-diverting scams; how colonized peoples lost their lands, freedom and resources; and then how the nations of Europe went to war with one another over the spoils. All an extremely ugly prospect involving many forms of domestic and overseas exploitations, crimes-against-humanity (including slavery) that Smith urgently wanted to see corrected. This he knew could be done, given fair practices in goods/services trade stripped of all subterfuge and injustices by substituting a mutually-satisfying system of exchange, as already occurs today between neighbours in many nations, as a matter of course. A great advantage since through mutual satisfaction it could soon lead to contented societies and a satisfied peaceful world. Thus, as we may recall, Adam Smith long ago explained the possibilities: “The discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind...... What benefits or what misfortunes to mankind may hereafter result The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 21 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved from those great events, no human wisdom can foresee. By uniting, in some measure, the most distant parts of the world, by enabling them to relieve one another's wants, to increase one another's enjoyments, and to encourage one another's industry, their general tendency would seem to be beneficial. To the natives however, both of the East and West Indies, all the commercial benefits which can have resulted from those events have been sunk and lost in the dreadful misfortunes which they have occasioned...... At the particular time when these discoveries were made, the superiority of force happened to be so great on the side of the Europeans that they were enabled to commit with impunity every sort of injustice in those remote countries. Hereafter, perhaps, the natives of those countries may grow stronger, or those of Europe may grow weaker, and the inhabitants of all the different quarters of the world may arrive at that equality of courage and force which, by inspiring mutual fear, can alone overawe the injustice of independent nations into some sort of respect for the rights of one another. But nothing seems more likely to establish this equality of force than that mutual communication of knowledge and of all sorts of improvements which an extensive commerce from all countries to all countries naturally, or rather necessarily, carries along with it.” (AS_WN, IV.7.166)

Thus, as we see, in stressing fair trade as the key to justice, the way to ensure a peaceful world, - Smith is emphasizing the crucial importance of equal concerns for the rights and needs of others along with one’s own. It was indeed a major point of departure from the system he was trying to get away from, but (as mentioned p.11) the strong opposition to such even handedness never relented as, even to this day it has succeeded in misrepresenting Smith as one advocating as the best solution self- serving individual greed the world over. And that notwithstanding some great representations of Smith’s real views as in Professor Jeffrey Sach’s 2007 Reith lectures (L5) where he conveys a wonderful sense of how Smith was attempting to transform the belligerent world of his day.(JSa1) http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/20070509_reith.pdf

Being largely self-regulatory through built-in rules of fairness, such a realization could continue as an alternative far preferable capitalist system. But crucially in ways having limits assuring long-term sustainability through rules of fairness to Nature, the ultimate source of all life-preserving assets capable of guaranteeing the sustenance of future generations of all species. For, as repeatedly illustrated by David Attenborough and others, throughout evolution all species have developed interdependencies crucial for their mutual survival. Hence, the vital need to limit resource extraction and production outputs to the essentials. Complementing that, is the need to limit ‘economic growth’ which we currently see as ever-expanding production for its own sake, as if it is ‘sacrosanct’ like some ‘god’ that ‘must be obeyed’. Hence, it is only common sense to greatly limit (even abolish) the production of all superfluous and dangerous items, notably all but the most basic defensive armaments. Accordingly, to maintain Nature in pristine condition, focus

22 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved has to be on the basic needs of all species, the environment and for humans a conserved commons recognized and greatly expanded, as 19th Century Chartists understood.(DB) Indeed, as comprehensively documented by Julian Cribb in his outstanding book, Surviving the 21st Century, the human species is facing such grave challenges concerning the deteriorated state of Nature due to its gross mismanagement that it is literally ‘on the brink’. Hence the urgent call to ‘Live (more) simply, that all may simply live’, such long recognized by many including E.O. Wilson, Thomas Berry, Ronald Wright and as recently stressed, Pope Francis, Bishop of Rome in his wonderfully thought-out Encyclical, Laudato Si, On Care For Our Common Home.( EOW ; TB ; RW ; FBR )

Measures for Crisis Control: e.g., ‘Ensuring Euro-Atlantic Security’

In view of the ever-rising economic instability, environmental deterioration, resource depletion, political uncertainties and out-of-control conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, the world’s powers must seriously engage in urgent measures for agreed settlements. Not to do so is to invite irreversible disasters across the world. For example, titled Ensuring Euro-Atlantic Security, representatives from the US (Sam Nunn, Nuclear Threat Initiative CEO), Britain (Des Browne), Europe (Wolfgang Ischinger), and Russia (Igor Ivanov), have made a timely appeal, calling for cooperative action to head off such a catastrophic end-point.(DB2)

Understandably one prime focus is on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. Weapons that scientists who developed them knew should never have been used because, - as they were given to believe, - such development was ‘just in case that mad man Hitler’ (as his own Staff Officers saw him) got them first. Yet, in spite of the highest US military advice, their effects were demonstrated on a human population.(USSBS-sum ; PDE1 ; WDL). And, even then were further developed ready for use in spite of the battery of warnings from scientists, Christians, Muslims, humanists and legions of thoughtful folk like George Kennan, concerning their inevitably suicidal effects on the great powers themselves, they ending up as the prime losers. However, (as above) the madness went ahead through four decades of the misnamed Cold War. Indeed, even at its end this unstable insane process was not stopped and made secure, but continued as a prime so-called ‘defense’ measure, - even though many ‘lesser’ nations were forging ahead and ‘joining the club’. Consequently, our economically and politically unstable world has become even more so due to this bizarre military obsession.

Hence the urgency of the Ensuring Euro-Atlantic Security case with its proposals for security that is indeed dependable. For as they point out, “The chasm between Russia and the West appears to be wider now than at any point since the Cold War. But, despite stark differences, there are areas of existential common interest. As we did during the darkest days of the Cold War, Americans, Europeans, and Russians must work together to avoid catastrophe, including by preventing terrorist attacks

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 23 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved and reducing the risks of a military - or even nuclear - conflict in Europe.”…. A starting point for “….minimizing the threat could be a new declaration by the Russian and US presidents reaffirming that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. This would mirror the joint statement made by former US President Ronald Reagan and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which was well received in both countries, and marked a new effort to improve relations.” Likewise, the conclusions from President George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev at their meeting in Malta, December 2,-3, 1989. From this, we quote a sentence which emphasizes their understanding of the crucial importance of having complete confidence in the security of their territory’s land and adjacent waters: “Bush affirms his support for perestroika, and reassures Gorbachev that they both remember the Helsinki Final Act's pronouncements on the inviolability of borders.” And another, confirming their joint interest in a secure Europe, “Apparently the biggest surprise to the Americans is Gorbachev's insistence that the U.S. should stay in Europe, that the U.S. and USSR "are equally integrated into European problems" and that they need to work together to keep those problems from exploding.” Transcript Malta Meeting, December 2-3, 1989.(B/G)

And finally the concluding statement in ‘Ensuring Euro-Atlantic Security’: “Europe, the US, and Russia are confronting a range of significant issues today. But none should distract attention from the important goal of identifying a new policy framework, based on existential common interests, that can stop the downward spiral in relations and stabilize Euro-Atlantic security. The practical near-term steps that we have identified here are the right place to begin. We need to start now.”

Integral to these efforts, crisis control must involve a number of current remediable issues. Already covered is the Middle East mess requiring concerted action to cease all illegal externally-engineered regime changes; focus on extinguishing all ISIS activities, together with nations’ counter-productive efforts to acquire the worlds fast-diminishing fossil-based resources by aggression and other means of cheating; then create a just market system. For, as we must keep in mind, all wars do more than undermine that desperately-needed resource conservation; in fact they are the fastest means of its exhaustion. Hence, the urgency of top level agreement on ways and means to conserve for today’s and tomorrow’s generations fossil-derived fuels to enable crash conversions to renewable (solar, wind, tidal, etc.) energy sources.

Another critical issue is China’s program to ensure continuity in its ability to maintain its international goods trade through the South China Seas. In a world beset with militarism, China, (like all great industrial powers) sees its naval/military preparations to safeguard those homeland channels as a right, just as the US, Japan and other traders do. So what all powers should be accorded is the recognized right to naval/military build up appropriate to such defence, not one aimed at offence. Again, it is time for international discussions along these lines

24 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved such that agreement will settle on common understanding and practice.

A further vital issue that has already gone well off the rails is the misuse of what was early claimed post-WW2 as a treaty to defend Western Europe from a Soviet military invasion, NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. For, despite the Cold War now long over, and the Soviet Union converted to a Russian Federation, NATO has been made to survive in other guises, it engaging in military action in many non-Western theatres, from Yugoslavia and Georgia, to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and Crimea, seemingly with no geographical or functional limits. In this, NATO is usurping the rightfully unique role of the United Nations Organization itself, it being the sole authority permitted to make changes in the nature of national regimes, including their borders, which within UNO’s universally-binding statutory law, can occur only via agreement by the UNO Security Council. Undoubtedly this requires overdue attention by the UN itself through the Security Council and UNGA, its constituent Member States, as well as citizens the world over. The issue is of the greatest urgency because NATO, driven by the US and supporting EU states has blatantly assumed the right to interfere with the security and safety of national borders in such a way as to risk serious international conflict, - as clearly set out by Richard Butler, Jeffrey Sachs and others.(RB ; JSa) Of course it’s a terrible hegemon try-on, - but such can lead to truly horrible outcomes as they go wrong. Just think of George F. Kennan’s account of France and Russia’s Fateful Alliance which, like Germany’s with Austro-Hungary, brought such near-universal loss, suffering and grief, all original WWI combatant states so horribly damaged, so very much worse off than before. Unfortunately, however, it is in the nature of hegemony to see such only when too late to change course. (GFK1 ; JSa7, 8, 9,10)

Notwithstanding these sombre cautions, we end optimistically by referring to Adam Smith’s wisdom (pp. 20-22) where he points to outcomes readily attainable once humans immerse themselves in a fair-trade system which engenders a spirit of immense relief and wonder that for so very long they could have stuck with such an ineffective, destructively evil, feudal no-brain system. In other words, by converting to a system that can comfortably cover the needs of all while at the same time preserving natural resources for the next and future generations. And, given the amicable stable conditions possible, to focus on creative endeavors that reject all forms of militarism, such saving not only human lives and health needed to promote universal welfare but, by ceasing arms production and use, resource depletion, gravely-damaging pollution and the utter wastage of creative skills, can thereby retain the natural reserves essential to assure the survival of species the world over.

Supportive of such an amicable, secure and sustainable way of life for the next and all future generations, we refer to three fine summaries of current problems requiring urgent control and commonsense rectification.

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 25 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved One is Pope Francis’ timely Laudato Si’ on Care of Our Common Home.(FBR)

Another, is Jeffrey Sachs’ The fatal expense of American imperialism which deals with today’s “….perpetual US war in the Middle East, one that has destabilized the region, massively diverted resources away from civilian needs toward the military, and helped to create mass budget deficits and the buildup of public debt. The imperial thinking has led to wars of regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria, across four presidencies: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. The same thinking has induced the United States to expand NATO to Russia’s borders, despite the fact that NATO’s supposed purpose was to defend against an adversary - the Soviet Union - that no longer exists. Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev has emphasized that eastward NATO expansion “was certainly a violation of the spirit of those declarations and assurances that we were given in 1990” regarding the future of East-West security.” (JSa10)

Finally the third, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Why the Arabs Don’t Want Us in Syria which concludes: “America’s founding fathers warned Americans against standing armies, foreign entanglements and, in John Quincy Adams’ words, “going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” Those wise men understood that imperialism abroad is incompatible with democracy and civil rights at home. The Atlantic Charter echoed their seminal American ideal that each nation should have the right to self-determination. Over the past seven decades, the Dulles brothers, the Cheney gang, the neocons and their ilk have hijacked that fundamental principle of American idealism and deployed our military and intelligence apparatus to serve the mercantile interests of large corporations and particularly, the petroleum companies and military contractors that have literally made a killing from these conflicts.

It’s time for Americans to turn America away from this new imperialism and back to the path of idealism and democracy. We should let the Arabs govern Arabia and turn our energies to the great endeavor of nation building at home. We need to begin this process, not by invading Syria, but by ending the ruinous addiction to oil that has warped U.S. foreign policy for half a century.” (RFK)

26 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved Sources Anderson, David. Dick Cheney’s Song of America, Drafting a Plan for Global Dominance, Harpers Magazine, October 2002 (Archive) May 14, 2014 (DA) Berry, Thomas. The Dream of the Earth, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, (TB) Blum, William. Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, Zed Books, London,; Spearhead, South Africa, 2001. (WB) http://kalamullah.com/Books/RogueState2002updeditionWilliamBlums.pdf Bollier, David. If Capitalism Can’t Bind People, What Will? Evonomics, 2016 http://evonomics.com/capitalism-bind-people-what-will-bollier/ (DB) Browne, D. Wolfgang, I. Ivanov, I. Nunn, S. Ensuring Euro-Atlantic Security, Project Syndicate, February 16, 2017. (DB2) https://www.project-syndicate.org/print/us-europe-russia-security-cooperation-by-des-browne-et-al-2017-02 Buckley, Ian. Australia’s Foreign Wars: Origins, Costs, Future! (IB1) http://www.anu.edu.au/emeritus/members/pages/ian_buckley/ Or illustrated at: http://www.britishempire.co.uk/article/australiaswars1.htm Buckley, Ian. Learning from Adam Smith – Help at Hand Today. ANU Emeritus Faculty, 2009 http://www.britishempire.co.uk/article/adamsmith.htm (IB4) Buckley, Ian. From Adam Smith to the Present Mess via Depressions and Two World Wars: A Short History of Economic and Christian Corruption Across the West. ANU Emeritus Faculty, 2014. (IB8) http://www.anu.edu.au/emeritus/members/pages/ian_buckley/From_Adam_Smith_to_the_Present_Mess_ via_Depressions_and_Two_World_Wars.pdf Buckley, Ian. Mercantile Origins of the Western World’s Current Moral, Economic, Military, Political and Environmental Crises A Short History of Humankind’s Militarized Over-Expansion. ANU Emeritus Faculty, 2016. (IB9) http://www.anu.edu.au/emeritus/members/pages/ian_buckley/Mercantile_Origins_of_the_Western_World s_Current_Crises.pdf Bush-Gorbachev Meeting, Post-WW2 Borders, Malta, December 2, 1989, (B/G) National Security Archive, December 3, 2009. http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB298/ Butler, Richard. Interesting Times, John Menadue’s Blog, 18 July, 2016 http://johnmenadue.com/richard-butler-interesting-times (RB)

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The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 27 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved Churchill, Winston S. The Aftermath - being a sequel to The World Crisis Macmillan, London, 1944. (WC4) Churchill, Winston S. The Gathering Storm, In, The Second World War, Vol.1,Penguin, London, 1985. (WC5i) Churchill, Winston S. The Grand Alliance, In, The Second World War, Vol.3. Cassell, London, 1985. (WC5 iii)

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Cousins, Norman, The Pathology of Power, W. W. Norton, New York,1987. (NC) Crawford, Netta. C. U.S. Costs of Wars Through 2014: $4.4 Trillion and Counting Summary of Costs for the U.S. Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. (NeC) http://costsofwar.org Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel, A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years, Vintage, Sydney, 1998. (JD)

Edwardes, Michael. The West in Asia 1850-1914, Batsford, London, 1967. (ME) Eisenhower, President Dwight D. Mandate For Change 1953-1956: The White House Years, Doubleday, 1963, p. 380. (PDE1) Eisenhower, President Dwight D. Farewell Speech, January 17, 1961. (PDE2) http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp Ford, Peter. Assad was not behind the chemical attack (April 4, 2017) UK Ambassador to Syria 2003-2006, BBC Breakfast, Friday April 7, 2017. (PF) https://gosint.wordpress.com/2017/04/13/ex-uk-ambassador-assad-was-not-behind-the-chemical-attack/ Francis, Bishop of Rome. Laudato Si’ On Care of Our Common Home, Papal Encyclical, May, 2015. (FBR) http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica- laudato-si.html Frontline PBS/WGBH. The Arming of Saudi Arabia (FL1) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/info/1112.html

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28 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved Fulbright, J.William, The Arrogance of Power, Jonathan Cape, London, 1967 (WJF) Galbraith, James K. Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis Oxford University Press, New York, 2012. (JaKG3) Gibbon, Edward. The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Vols 1-4, Harper Brothers, New York 1836. Project Gutenberg Edition, 1997. (EG) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25717/25717-h/25717-h.htm Gilbert, Martin. A History of the Twentieth Century Vol. 1,1900-1933, Harper Collins, London, 1997. (MG1) Gilbert, Martin. A History of the Twentieth Century Vol. 2, 1933-1951, HarperCollins, London, 1998. (MG2) Gunther, John, Inside Russia Today, Hamish Hamilton, London,1958. (JG) Hersh, Seymour. The Red Line and the Rat Line, London Review of Books, V. 36. 8 ·21, 2014 (SH) https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line Hobson, John A. Imperialism: A Study, James Pott, New York, 1902. (JH) http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Hobson/hbsnImp.html Johnson, Chalmers. Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, The Nation, September 27, 2001. (CJ1) Johnson, Chalmers. The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, Verso, London, New York, 2004. (CJ2) Kennan, George F. The Fateful Alliance: France, Russia, and the Coming of the First World War, Manchester University Press, 1984. (GFK1) Kennan, George F. The Failure of Our Success, talk, Council on Foreign Relations meeting New York, as published (NYT Archives), New York Times, March 14, 1994. (GFK 2) http://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/14/opinion/the-failure-in-our-success.html?pagewanted=all Kennan, George F. Forward to Norman Cousins’ The Pathology of Power, Penguin Books Canada, Ontario, 1987 (see IB9, Appendix 2) (GFK 3) Kennedy, David, Rise to Power: Professor David Kennedy on American History, (militarism) ABC RN, Background Briefing, October 21, 2001 (DK) http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/rise-to-power-professor-david- kennedy-on-american/3500516 Kennedy, Gavin. What is Wrong with Mercantile Political Economy (GK) http://adamsmithslostlegacy.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/what-is-wrong-with-mercantile-political.html

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 29 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved Kennedy, President John F. Commencement Address at American University, June 10, 1963 on the great significance of world peace (JFK) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9266 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ootEGoVKy4 Kennedy, Paul, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, Fontana Press, London, 1989 (PK) Kennedy, Robert F. Jr. Why the Arabs Don’t Want Us in Syria: They don’t hate ‘our freedoms.’ They hate that we’ve betrayed our ideals in their own countries – for oil. POLITICOMAGAZINE, February 22, 2016. (RFK) http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/rfk-jr-why-arabs-dont-trust-america-213601?o=0 Keynes, John Maynard. The Economic Consequences of the Peace, London, 1920. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15776/15776-h/15776-h.htm (JMK) Klare, Michael, The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources, Metropolitan, New York, 2012 (MK3) https://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/167/transcript_167.pdf Klare, Michael, Twenty-First-Century Energy Wars Global Conflicts Are Increasingly Fueled by the Desire for Oil and Natural Gas -- and the Funds They Generate, In Tomgram, July8, 2014. (MK4) http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175865/tomgram%3A_michael_klare,_fighting_for_oil Leahy, William D. I was There, The American Military Experience, Chief of Staff, Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, Arno Press, 1979. (WDL) Lin, Christina. Saudi Arabia’s and Turkey’s Pipeline Wars in Yemen and Syria, http://www.css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities- studies/resources/docs/429_Lin.pdf June, 2016. (CL) McGovern, Ray. The Syrian-Sarin ‘False Flag Lesson, warisacrime.org http://warisacrime.org/content/false-flag-shock-and-awe-who-cares (RMcG1) McGovern, Ray. Syria: ‘Chemical Attack’ — Ray McGovern on RT International, April 8, 2017 http://raymcgovern.com April 8, 2017 (RMcG2)

Postol, Theodore. The nerve Agent Attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria (w/ Addenda)The Unz Review, April 12, 2017. (PT) http://www.unzcloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Postol-SyriaReport.pdf http://www.unz.com/article/the-nerve-agent-attack-in-khan-shaykhun-syria/ (PT1&2)

Sachs, Jeffrey. Bursting at the Seams, Reith Lectures, (L1 – 5) BBC, 2007. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2007/lecture1.shtml (All, L 1-5) (JSa1) http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/20070509_reith.pdf (L5 only) Sachs, Jeffrey. The Waste of War: Why Global Instability Today does not have to End as Badly as it did in 1914, Project Syndicate, July 21, 2014. (JSa3) https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/jeffrey-d-sachs-on-why-global-instability-today-does-not- have-to-end-as-badly-as-it-did-in-1914

30 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved Sachs, Jeffrey. The War with Radical Islam, Project Syndicate, Jan. 15, 2015 https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/radical-islam-western-military-intervention-by-jeffrey-d- sachs-2015-01 (JSa4) Sachs, Jeffrey. Ending Blowback Terrorism, Project Syndicate, Nov. 29, 2015. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/islamic-state-blowback-terrorism-by-jeffrey-d- sachs-2015-11 (JSa6) Sachs, Jeffrey. Ending the Syrian War, Project Syndicate, Feb. 29, 2016. (JSa7) https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ending-syrian-civil-war-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2016-02 Sachs, Jeffrey.The Meaning of Brexit, Project Syndicate, June 25, 2016. (JSa8) https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/meaning-of-brexit-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2016-06?utm Sachs, Jeffrey. Why ISIS Persists, Project Syndicate, July 5, 2016 (JSa9) https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/why-isis-persists-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2016-07 Sachs, Jeffrey. The fatal expense of American imperialism, Daniel Hertzberg for The Boston Globe, October 30, 2016 https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/10/30/the- fatal-expense-american-imperialism/teXS2xwA1UJbYd10WJBHHM/story.html (JSa10) Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments Glasgow, 1759. http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smMS.html (AS_MS) Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Books I-V, (1776) Edwin Cannan, ed.,5th Edition, Methuen, London, 1904. http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html (AS_WN) Tuchman, Barbara. The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War 1890-1914, Bantam, 1970. (BT1) Tuchman, Barbara, The March of Folly, Abacus, London, 1984 (BT3) United Nations Charter and Statute of the International Court of Justice, San Francisco, 24 October, 1945, (UNC) https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/ctc/uncharter.pdf) UNESCO Slave Routes a Global Vision – You Tube http://www.anu.edu.au/emeritus/events/docs/Intro_UNESCO_Slave_Routes-A_Global_Vision.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXn6lGS-GZE (UNESCO)

UNHCR Syria Regional Refugee Response Inter-agency Information Sharing Portal http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php December 13, 2016. (UNHCR) United States Strategic Bombing Surveys (USSBS) Summary texts on web: European War: http://www.anesi.com/ussbs02.htm SEE: Pacific War: http://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm (USSBS-Sum)

The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? 31 Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved (USSBS) Summary Report (Pacific War), (Pacific Report #1) July 1946, Vol.7,. ed. D. MacIsaac, Garland, New York, 1976 (USSBS-1) Warnke, Paul. Putting an End to Business as Usual, Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security, Peace and Security V6, 8 1991 (PW) Wilson, E.O. The Loss of Biodiversity is a Tragedy, UNESCO Interviews http://www.unesco.org/new/en/media-services/single- view/news/edward_o_wilson_the_loss_of_biodiversity_is_a_tragedy/ (EOW) Wright, Ronald. A Short History of Progress, House of Anasi Press, Toronto, 2004 (RW) Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, Free Press, New York, 2003. (DY)

Ian Buckley and Nikolaus Fominas ANU Emeritus Faculty Building 1C, 24 Balmain Crescent, Australian National University, ACT 2601 Australia [email protected] http://www.anu.edu.au/emeritus/members/Ian_Buckley.html [email protected] http://www.anu.edu.au/emeritus/members/Nik_Fominas.html

Dedication: Allan Edward Buckley January15, 1922 – April 17, 1944

Australian National University Emeritus Faculty

32 The West’s Long-failed Economic System - Where to From Here? Copyright © 2017 Ian Buckley & Nik Fominas– All rights reserved